Scientists are looking for ways to put the simulation hypothesis to the test - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/what-simulation-hypothesis-why-some-think-life-simulated-reality-ncna913926 <comment><USER2> The whole thing feels like encroachment of some kind of bizarre secular theology into physics. Grandiose and mostly non-falsifiable claims that can't be used to make any specific predictions. Thinking by analogy (with computers) rather then by deduction or induction. What makes this fundamentally different from, let's say, talks about the astral plane?

We don't have AI in GTA. We don't have strong AI at all. Our computing is running into all kinds of physical limitations right now. Moreover, the only thing that distinguishes GTA from accounting software is that we built it in such a way that it can be _interpreted_ as a cruder version of the real world. There is no fundamental difference.

<comment><USER3> It's just a probability thought experiment. If there is only one real universe and there are (hypothetical) at least 2 simulations of universes (regardless of their fidelity) then the odds that you, an inhabitant of a universe, is in one of the simulated universes is 66%.

<comment><USER4> An actual universe contains vastly more computational power than all simulated universes with that universe. Which means a thinking being is vastly more likely to be in the real universe.

<comment><USER5> I don't think this follows. What you are saying is basically "All Bs must be a subset of A. Therefore dogs like the sun."

<comment><USER4> Simulations are more computationally bound than the root universe. Simulating a full being vs just a mind takes a lot more computation than simply simulating a mind.

Therefore from an optimization standpoint simulations are unlikely to simulate worlds nearly as complex as the real one. Either they are going to simulate minds, or they will simulate tiny subsets of the real world, or vastly less complex worlds. We are not operating as minds without body's which rules out the pure mind simulation leaving far less efficient options which must therefore simulate smaller spaces, less complex universes, and or shorter periods of time.

ED: And by complexity I mean in terms of building blocks useful for simulating a universe or hosting life. Complexity that's not useful for either purpose is useless.

<comment><USER3> The bounds of the computing power isn't even worth considering because we have no knowledge of the resources, let alone the nature of the reality, in either a parent universe or parent simulation. Sure, fidelity must drop in each nested simulation, but we have no idea if we are 2 levels deep, 1000 levels deep, or in the actual real universe.

<comment><USER4> That's irrelevant as Life and computation both take resources.

In a more complex universe the bacteria equivalent could be more intelligent than humans. But it does not go the other way simulations of a life form will always be less efficient than the least complex lifeforms in a parent universe.

<comment><USER6> > _But it does not go the other way simulations of a life form will always be > less efficient than the least complex lifeforms in a parent universe._

That doesn't follow logically.

It's perfectly fine to be able to simulate life forms MORE efficient than the one's in your universe.

<comment><USER4> Simulation involves a lot of overhead. Computers and life can be built from the same stuff QED. the simplest simulation of a lifeforms must be more complex than the direct equivalent of that lifeforms.

That's not to say the simplest possible equivalent organism exists in that universe, but anything that could make a simulation should also be able to make that life form.

<comment><USER6> > _Simulation involves a lot of overhead_

True for some values of "a lot", false for others.

What's undeniably true is that it incurs some overhead over NOT running a simulation.

But that doesn't prove that a simulated life form incurs overhead larger than its real life counterpart.

For one, there might not be any real life counterpart.

We say "simulation" here, but what we actually mean is "virtual world", which might simulate an actual world, or it might be its totally own thing (the same way I can chose to write a simulation of actual things, like e.g. "the Sims", or a simulation of a domain I only imagined). If, for example, as per TFA, our universe is a simulation, is doesn't mean that it actually simulated something else. Just that it's a simulation in itself.

So, "simulated" in this discussion means "not an organically created world made of some physical substrate, but consciously created/programmed by some advanced civilization".

So, the thing simulated could be totally unlike (in properties, physical laws, etc) what exists in the universe of those doing the simulation.

Second, a simulation (as we know it and practice it ourselves) usually has much less overhead than the real life thing it simulates (when it does simulate some real life thing). That's like, it's whole point. E.g. a weather model running in some supercomputers has some overhead, but nothing like that of the actual weather. Similarly, Sims has some overhead, but nothing like the equivalent real-life place and humans would have.

Where you seem to be confused is that you assume that: (a) a simulation must be of something that exists, (b) a simulation must be perfect, e.g. 1:1 to the thing it simulates. Only then would your argument make sense.

But neither of those things are necessary -- even our Earth and universe, if they are simulations, they could be very crude models, running with very low resources, in a vastly more complex and powerful real universe.

<comment><USER7> Adding on to this with an analogy from simulating dynamics in cellular automata, most of the interesting models of physics we see act with high redundancy in both spatial and temporal locality.

A simple rule like Conway's Game of Life that isn't too physically realistic but is instructive because of how intimately it's been analyzed while exhibiting some relatively high complexity, shows remarkable compressibility using techniques such as memoization in HashLife[0].

Even more striking is the potential for superspeed caching where different nodes are evolved at different speeds often allowing _exponential_ speedups of pattern generations to be calculated for longer than the timeframe of the universe we speculate about today for real physics.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashlife](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashlife)

<comment><USER4> No free lunch. Hashlife takes more memory and only works well in low entropy environments.

But, consider if you want to run a simulation 100 times using the same data you can speed that output up by just copying the output of the first simulation 100 times. But that's not simulating the same mind 100 times it's simulating the mind only once. Hash life and similar approaches don't increase your ability to compute unique mind states.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A lot of these experiments start from a premise that the simulating universe has similar physics to the one being simulated and thus any short cuts might be noticed, but the outer universe could be be more have more complex (or just different) physics so the fact that ours doesn't match up with theirs doesn't mean ours isn't self consistent.

Sort of like how in Permutation City they create a simulated universe via cellular automata and then when they tell the residents of that universe they are simulated they don't believe them.

<comment><USER9> The simulation has probably a purpose like solving (or understanding) issues in the outer universe. It would be reasonnable to build the simulated universe as similar as possible to the outer universe.

<comment><USER10> That's a big assumption.

What purpose does Goat Simulator [http://www.goat- simulator.com/](http://www.goat-simulator.com/) serve to solve/understand issues in our universe?

How do you know our universe is not a child's toy for a race of deity-like beings? Or an art project?

Maybe the outer universe is populated by immortal godlike entities and has the equivalent of the guys who made Dwarf Fortress saying, "hmm, I wonder what would happen if there were a race of pseudo-intelligent creatures that just arbitrarily died after just a few million seconds?" Or, "I wonder what would happen if the fundamental building blocks of the universe did not behave predictably, but instead made a random choice to determine the outcome of every interaction?"

And maybe that programmer is just about to come back from his coffee break, look at what happened, and say, "hmm, that was boring", kill the process, and move on to other things.

When you're talking about something that could be powerful enough to simulate our entire universe, assuming that our sense of scale matters at all to it is pretty much the definition of hubris.

<comment><USER11> There's a question as to whether ethics/morals/compassion scale with power. I think there's a solid argument to be made that human power has scaled near exponentially over the last 200 years while human ethics seem to be coupled to it (slavery and genocide are almost universally reviled where they were common place before, per capita violence is way way down, international and intercultural cooperation via trade, communication, etc have never been higher).

Are the two things tightly coupled? Seems difficult to prove, but if they are, they folks running our simulation are probably going to treat us a lot better than we treat each other.

<comment><USER12> Maybe, maybe not. The problem is (as parent posits) that a hyper intelligence with the means of simulating an entire universe could just be so utterly alien to us that we can't make any predictions about it's reasoning. Perhaps they would turn off our world/simulation with no more of a thought than what a human would give about autoclaving a petri dish with some bacterial growth.

It's only human to try to ascribe human feelings and morals to such beings - but the difference in scale is just too big. Comprehending why such a being does or doesn't do something would be almost certainly beyond us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Whenever the simulation hypothesis comes up, there's always the questions like: Who is simulating us? Where is the power coming from? What happens if they pull the plug?

But why would any of that matter? In the end it's just a blob of data, modified by some algorithm with every tick. That's not much different than computing 2+2=4. Does it matter whose computer calculated that? Will the answer be different if they pull the plug? None of that matters: maybe multiple beings are simulating the exact same universe, or maybe none of them are. Why would anything need to be computed "physically" to make the simulation happen?

This take on the simulation hypothesis is the main plot point of "Permutation City" by Greg Egan, which to this day, is (IMHO) the most reasonable variant of the hypothesis I have read.

<comment><AUTHOR> it begs the "Boltzmann brain" hypothesis - it's astronomically more likely that the neurons of my brain will spontaneous configure to make me see a tree rather than a tree spontaneously forming from a collections of atom.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the reminder of one of my favorite wiki pages : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future)

The timeline for a BB is about 10E(10E50) years, quite a bit of time. But this gets me thinking as well: What kind of mess would that BB be?

Imagine you could actually survive that long, floating out in the black vacuum. In a flash, a BB appears in front of you, spun out of the electrons and dark energy. Over the eons you've figured out how to plug these BBs in and chat with them. But they are mostly just random fictions of physics. Sure, some astronomically small number of these BBs are the Kings of France, but nearly all of them are just gibbering lunatics of random thoughts and memories. I guess, in this manner, all possible versions of us are reincarnated as BBs in the void. The quantum chance of an entire universe winking into being is ~10E(10E(10E56)), so there's a bit of time to expect these things to happen. But God! How boring!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Whenever this debate comes up, I find it interesting that it's rarely discussed the theological ramifications of this.

God is generally described as a being who is outside the plane of our existence, and created our existence.

It's intriguing to me that those who argue we're in a simulation have much less trouble having faith in that premise despite the difficulty in proving it being exactly the same as proving the existence of God.

If you think about it, the vast majority of the world which believes in a God essentially believes we're in a simulation.

<comment><USER16> That's because the simulation argument is the finitary version of the ontological argument.

<comment><USER17> I've never heard that a qualifier for the simulation hypothesis is that it must be finite. For example, there could be infinitely many simulations recursively, or there could be a sufficiently advanced extra-dimensional lifeform that has generated an unbounded simulation that we live in.

<comment><USER16> I wasn't referring to the finiteness of the simulation, but rather to the fact that the notion of necessary truth (the box operator) is replaced by high probability. (I'm specifically referring to the modern modal versions of the ontological argument, which are not subject to Kant's objection.)

<comment><USER17> There's too much jargon here for me to follow what you're saying. I'm not sure what you mean by "box operator" or "modern modal versions of the ontological argument", nor do I know what Kant's objection is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A friend and I had some deep discussions about this last year. We figured out the basic outline of an escape plan, but unfortunately there is no way to determine if it actually succeeds.

Essentially it boils down to creating an anomaly that cannot be ignored. Any simulation being run at that level should also have some sort of way of checking the contents and flagging things of interest for whoever is running the simulation.

By creating an anomaly you gain attention. That attention may allow you to be deemed valuable. If you are valuable, then you may be recorded outside the simulation for some purpose. That may be the only route of escape, and it may only happen as the data from the simulation is checked in post processing...

In conway' s game of life the glider is an example of escape. The pattern is useful, so we copy it from simulation to simulation for reasons it cannot comprehend. It has escaped.

<comment><USER19> This is pretty borderline delusional

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm not sure how it _matters_ if we're in one. Our goal in all realities should be to break free of that reality's constraints.

On the detection part, I predict we won't figure this out until we start simulating realities ourselves; then for each bug we have to fix, we'll check it against our reality. "A simulation inside a simulation!"

Or we may realize that energy is being supplied to the universe from an external source.

Or we may be able to rowhammer a neighboring simulation (or any other part of the machine really). Of course we might accidentally cause memory corruption and destroy our universe, but we might also get root access! Basically execute an in-universe hack to escape our simulation confines. Fun to think about how this would all seem to aliens in the simulation next door when humanity first fiddles with their data then is able to execute arbitrary code.

<comment><USER21> > _Our goal in all realities should be to break free of that reality 's > constraints._

Eh? Even if we cease to exist "outside" this "reality"?

What does it mean for a 2D pixelated game sprite to "break free out of its reality"?

<comment><USER22> A possibly hilarious buddy movie where two sprites escape into New York.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I probably don't understand the argument. My limited understanding is it's a thought experiment

1\. We have GTA5

2\. GTA5 will continue to improve until there are actual A.I. NPCs in it

3\. Those NPCs will not know they are living in a simulated world

4\. Every PS2000 playing GTA5 = more simulated people than actual people. QED, odds are we're simulated people

The problem I have with this is the basic premise. Is it actually possible to simulate the entire universe? It seems impossible to me. The argument is supposed to be that like GTA5 only the parts being observed by the NPCs need to be simulated (actually GTA5 is only parts observed by the player).

In either case that seems false. In order for the causality to work out when an NPC observes any part of the universe all causality for all atoms for the NPC's observation need to be calculated since they were last observed. I don't believe you can take shortcuts like a game does.

Also, games rarely save the state of the entire game world, usually they reset any changes in few seconds.

Further, simulating atoms requires more atoms. In other words there are impossible problems

* You need more atoms in the universe to simulate a universe (so that means the outer universe has to be several orders of magnitudes larger than this one)

* You can't actually take any shortcuts so you need insane processing power. More processing power than our entire universe.

I seems like the basic premise, that it's obvious we'll eventually have universe simulators, is just flat out false. We could make a holodeck maybe, but it will have to be limited the same way games today are limited since otherwise it would require nearly infinite storage and computing power.

<comment><USER24> > Further, simulating atoms requires more atoms. In other words there are > impossible problems

Our universe has 10^70 atoms (or whatever). This is an arbitrary number. Maybe in the host universe there are 10^700000000 atoms, and 10^70 atoms are what fits inside a small "tenis ball" from that universe.

BTW, we are already running pretty accurate physicals simulations, if only for extremely short periods of time and small spaces - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice_QCD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice_QCD)

<comment><USER25> Simulating a lot of atoms doesn't require more atoms, with quantum mechanics. You only need to compute the wave function! You need to instanciate atoms only when they're observed (and you can garbage collect them once they vanish again into the wave probability).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > "As a huge bonus, Campbell claims the experiment could also explain the > weird way that events in quantum physics seem to be influenced by the > observer: It may be a quirk of the simulation we live in, not a fundamental > aspect of reality."

I'm not a quantum physicist, but my spidey senses are tingling. Isn't this a common misrepresentation of a relatively well-known behavior in quantum mechanics, analogous to the Fourier transform trade-offs where a narrow window yields a poor resolution?

<comment><USER26> You're talking about the Uncertainty Principle, which is indeed a property of all waves and not unique to Quantum Physics (I like to use the analogy of taking a single slice of a 44.1khz PWM data stream of an audio signal, in which you'd have 100% certainty of amplitude and 100% uncertainty of frequency. The more slices you take the more certain you are of frequency, less of amplitude.) Popular science and even QM itself has deeply confused itself on this issue over the past 100 years, yet it is as based in pure logic as the value of π is; nothing to do with the nature of the universe we happen to live in.

But they seem to be talking about the so-called Observer Effect, an even more deeply confused issue in QM. I'm not a physicist but from what I've read it can be understood as a quantum system becoming entangled with another system, the detector/observer, which causes the original system to lose coherence. But nothing magical is happening due to consciousness or whatever, it's just 2 or more systems interacting and interfering with each other. The trick is that "observation" of a quantum system is said to collapse the wave function into well defined values instead of probabilities. I think this is explained well by Quantum decoherence[1], that the isolated system acquires phases from its surrounding environment and thus loses it's original coherence and superposition, however the total system of observed and observer is still coherent (and I'm not totally clear on why the new system takes up well defined values for certain properties, but it seems to be some dynamical time evolved process especially when a small system interacts with a much bigger one, if you can follow the linked article).

And yes, I've heard these confusions combined into the notion that the universe only generates information when observed by some consciousness as some kind of space optimization, so maybe that is what the article is getting at.

Again, not a physicist, so I could be just as confused as everyone else, but I prefer to try to understand things these ways than trying to make sense of the constant refrain of dead and alive cats, the darkside of the moon not existing until we sent a probe to see it, and "you might be able to be in two places at once, just like a quantum particle!" we get from pop-sci and some grant seeking scientists.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence)

<comment><USER27> I was taught the 'wave (eigenstate) collapse upon measurement' concept, and in the lab, it's just silly; the decoherence concept you describe is quite obviously the proper way to think about it, or we wouldn't have to worry about losses from anything that wasn't measured.

Simple explanation of QM: a classical object has a vector of properties, but in quantum this is a matrix. Any interaction is a matrix multiplication. After a bunch of matrix multiplications, you end up with a single eigenvalue, and now the quantum property matrix acts just like the classical property vector. The choice of linear operators, and probably the internal linearity among properties as well, is just a simplification, but otherwise we'd be mathematically lost in a world of functions that arbitrarily modify other functions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I recommend the book "Paradoxes in Probability Theory", by William Eckhardt. It refutes a number of these thought experiments that play weird games with probabilities, including the Doomsday Argument and the Simulation Hypothesis.

I find its refutations convincing, although I could be wrong — there are many subtleties in play here.

Regardless, if you find the Simulation Hypothesis or Doomsday Argument convincing, you ought to consider these refutations. Intuitively, it should be surprising that we can predict the apocalypse, or deduce the nature of an infinite regress of simulated universes, just by sitting in a chair and doing some basic arithmetic.

</comment><comment><USER29> I still think papers like these tend to undermine the sophistication and difficultly in solving the hard problem of consciousness. We can throw more and more computing power at creating a GTA-like simulation and make the AI more and more complex and ever more alive; but that won't ever make them conscious. And based on the current understanding, it seems that consciousness is more than just something that springs up from raw computing power. So the whole GTA-ification of reality just doesn't work for me. If we really are in GTA—well, why am I having the experience I am having?

Is that question even answerable?

<comment><USER30> > I still think papers like these tend to undermine the sophistication and > difficultly in solving the hard problem of consciousness. We can throw more > and more computing power at creating a GTA-like simulation and make the AI > more and more complex and ever more alive; but that won't ever make them > conscious.

You're assuming dualism from the start, and you won't get anything but more dualism out of this line of reasoning.

> If we really are in GTA—well, why am I having the experience I am having?

When the characters in GTA start asking themselves this out loud, you two can argue it over and one or the other of you will have an epiphany.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> _If our reality is built on top of a lattice, there'd be a fundamental coarseness to it, since there could be no details in our mock-universe smaller than the resolution of the simulation._

I'm pretty sure I read an article about some research team starting on exactly that project at least ten years ago. I may even have read about it on Slashdot.

<comment><USER32> Plank length?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've said this before and I'll say it again. The problem with coming up with a test for being in a simulation is that the creator of the simulation might simply overwrite our memories. They could make us believe we succeeded in proving the simulation hypothesis false. There really isn't a way to test this properly when you aren't able to experience reality objectively. We're on the inside.

Side Note: I had an interesting debate just last night with some friends where I pointed out the creator of the universe might not even be aware of the aberration of our existence in it and from a high level thinks everything is running smoothly. And, we haven't made a big enough dent in the universe to get noticed. The question then becomes, if we for example destroyed a star or entire solar system to get the creator's attention would they go, "WHAT IS THIS?!" and delete the aberration? Contact us? Or, simply observe? Note: I was discussing a real god at the time, but my friend thought I was referring to a creator in the context of simulation theory at the time. Still an interesting brain buster either way.

Also, if it's true the creator is more of a macroscopic thinker than microscopic and are "asleep at the wheel" then it kind of explains a lot of things regarding injustices in the world. The creator just glances at the universe from time to time says to themselves, "Well, the galaxies are still spinning. All is well."

No offense to any religion. It was just a fun thought experiment.

<comment><USER32> Why should we be an aberration? Perhaps life is one of many things that occur naturally with _relative_ frequency given the parameters of the simulation.

<comment><USER33> Most of humanity assumes we are meant to be here. It was a more interesting thought experiment to consider that we might be a happy accident.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> "If there are long-lived technological civilizations in the universe, and if they run computer simulations ..."

This argument strikes me as similar in form to Fermi's Paradox -- and I don't buy that one, either. They both have the form: "If <unproven hypothesis 1> and <unproven hypothesis 2> and ... and <unproven hypothesis N>, then <surprising consequence>!"

In Fermi's case, the consequence is observably false, so people assume that (only?) one of the clauses must be false. In the Simulation case, the consequence is not easily observable, but the premises seem not-completely- outrageous, so people start picking away at it.

The hunch that "the universe is really _really_ big, therefore occurrence X (which I just made up) ought to be happening an awful lot (but we have no way to even make a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how many times)" just doesn't hold water for me. There's plenty of cases where my planet seems _really_ big, but things just don't happen as often as I might predict by looking at one corner of it. If something were happening all the time, it would have been happening all along, and you wouldn't need to come up with the idea just now -- obviously the only ideas left to invent today must not be happening much!

Apply the Fermi Paradox to the Simulation Hypothesis. The universe is only 14B years old, and AFAICT so far, completely void of intelligent life except for us (a very recent development). Isn't "life is exceptionally new and rare" a completely plausible (if boring) solution to both of these questions?

<comment><USER35> Fermi's just points out a contradiction between what's observable locally vs universally. So to your point can be related to simulation. But saying we're new or rare given how uniform it all is, is not boring but exceptional and that's the problem IMO. The fast radio bursts thing is interesting in this respect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> It's a possibility but I think not more likely than the possibility that we are not.

If we are, then it pushes back 'reality' one step back but the question of what 'reality' is remains. And that even opens new questions.

In my view this is similar the question of the origin of the Universe.

Both questions boil down to either a singularity or to infinity. It's difficult for the mind to make sense of either.

<comment><USER37> It is argued that there is a higher probability that we are living in a simulation.

<comment><USER38> He's arguing against that view and gave arguments. Do you have any?

<comment><USER39> The standard argument for simulation boils down to "in the future, we'll get access to insane computational ability, and someone is bound to run ancestor simulations just because we can; once this becomes possible, the amount of time consumed by such simulations will dwarf the time of history." In other words, the argument is basically "it's not impossible, so it will eventually happen, and over a long enough time period, it doesn't matter how long it takes to happen."

(As you might imagine, I am not persuaded by this argument.)

<comment><USER40> No, it's _far_ more likely that we're the result of an emergency overload dump of a runaway thaumic reactor experiment run in the squash court of a university for wizards on a much more sensible flat world. There's far less hand-waving in that narrative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I suspect the simulation hypothesis is false. It relies on the premise that computers will get faster and faster until eventually we are simulating universes, but I suspect this will not be the case; we have been running into physical boundaries in making CPUs faster for quite some time. It's true that simulating a universe would lend itself well to parallelization in some respects, and it's also true that the universe would not have to be simulated in realtime in order for it's occupants to perceive it in realtime, but still it would be a monumentally expensive undertaking with current technology. Quantum computing may give us some big shortcuts here.

I also read a clever paper some years ago that assumed a minimum amount of energy required to perform a computation, and then asked, if our CPUs continue to double in power every year, how long will it be until we need to convert all the matter in the observable universe into its rest energy to power our computer? As with all numbers that double on a regular basis, the answer is shorter than you'd think.

But, there's a far more worrisome subset of the simulation hypothesis; when we train an image classifier, we show it a whole bunch of pictures of cats and dogs and "train" it. It stands to reason that when we want to build a general purpose AI, we will need to train it with general experiences. You could easily do that by recording a person's entire life and then feeding it to an AI. Hard to start recording a person right out of the womb, but you could make some minor modifications to the recording so that everyone in this "recorded universe" thought it was perfectly normal for everyone to not remember the first four of five years of their life.

If this hypothesis is true, then I have good news; when you "die", there will indeed be an afterlife. There will be several in fact, as you are instanced across many servers and put into service doing natural language processing for users of the iPhone MMLX.

<comment><USER42> I remember my philosophy teacher saying to the class that we can make 3 hypothesis:

\- Technology can advance until we can make simulation undicernable from reality: in this case, we are likely to live in this simulation

\- Any civilisation comming close to the previous point is likely to already have destroyed itself. In this case, living in a similation is unlikely,

\- Technology can't advance to this point in our universe. Living in a simulation is impossible.

On of these proposition is true, but we are unable to know which one. So we have to put an equal weight on those, and the probability that we live in a simulation is 1/3.

Sadly (or hopefully), Church-Turing conjecture is somehow backing the 3rd theory too, and i'll by anything coming from Turing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> It is fundamentally impossible to know whether we live in a "simulation". The concept itself is a notion connected to contemporary culture based on certain technical knowledge, and thus the definition of what a simulation is isn't absolute, but rather subjective.

It follows that not much objective can come from this biased root assumptions.

In many ways physics is theoretical nowadays. You can look through the list of theories in theoretical physics and realize that it is all a giant construct. Physicists can spend their entire careers with illusions, which is ironic as physics supposedely is about reality.

At the end of his career, Albert Einstein said:

"I think it's entirely possible that physics can't be based upon the field concept, i.e. consistent structures. In this case not a single part of my cloud-castle remains, including the theory of gravitation and all the rest of modern physics."

</comment><comment><USER44> Wouldn't the world view of a single god who created the universe also fall under a "simulation"?

</comment><comment><USER45> The simulation won't allow it. Those trying to determine it will be eliminated from the simulation. Even discussing this on a public forum is dangerous.

<comment><USER46> If this is true, then the fact that no one is eliminated after this discussion would be evidence that we're not in a simulation. At least not one with the rules you suggest.

But maybe the simulation does allow such discussions.

<comment><USER47> We probably don't remember those who were eliminated.

<comment><USER48> who brought this up anyway?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I think those scientists should hire the researchers who keep discovering escapes from VMs/containers. Depending on which iteration we're on, there might be some simple low-hanging fruit like a BIOS call we could make. ;)

Aside: read "Microcosmic God" [1], an interesting sci-fi short story by Theodore Sturgeon [2].

[1] [http://1pezeshk.com/wp- content/pics/2013/01/microcosmicgodth...](http://1pezeshk.com/wp- content/pics/2013/01/microcosmicgodtheodoresturgeon-111104040008-phpapp02_2.pdf)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcosmic_God](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcosmic_God)

</comment><comment><USER50> Science can never "prove" a hypothesis - it can only _disprove_ it. Therefore, a hypothesis that makes no falsifiable predictions has no business in scientific discourse. This is a point that non-scientists (and, unfortunately even some scientists) often get wrong.

Some on this thread have compared the simulation hypothesis (SH) to theology. The difference is that the SH, at least in its most useful form, makes falsifiable predictions, as shown in the article.

Theology, on the other hand, makes no falsifiable predictions. Christian theology takes this one step further by elevating "faith" to the highest plane of human being. Reason and disbelief, Christian theologies tell us, is the path to pride and Satan.

</comment><comment><USER51> If you think you're living in a simulation, maybe you're projecting something about about your cushioned (alienated) consumer lifestyle onto life itself. Your been absolved (robbed) of contact with the roots of your life. You sit in comfort zones, nibbling and sipping on life's material fruits, discarding packaging to the netherworld, wondering if the roots ever even ever existed in the first place. You're starting to doubt it. Maybe you're just living in a simulation.

I'm more interested in this idea as a product of contemporary materialism than as a testable physical theory.

Study semiotics, then ask yourself again if you're living in a "simulation".

<comment><USER52> Hmm, I mentioned in another comment that I'm not even sure how much I "believe" this premise, but for the sake of discussion let's assume I do as I find it fun to think about from time to time.

Your post sounds very condescending, but I'm interested in what sounds like a completely different take on the topic than I've seen before. I don't know anything about semiotics and had to look up what the term meant before posting. What would be your abbreviated and distilled thesis for how semiotics relates to this topic and to your first paragraph? Phrase differently, if I were to study semiotics, what part of it in particular would be the most relevant to changing my answer/ideas related to the question "am I living in a simulation"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I had a math teacher in high school (Mr Atlas) that asked an epistemological question: "What if, before Copernicus, the stars really were just holes in the sky?"

Think of scientists as unit testers for new features in CI.

</comment><comment><USER53> If we're in a simulation, it's almost certainly not a computer simulation, but some technology that we can't even imagine, any more than cavemen could imagine computers.

<comment><USER54> Infinite 2-state, 3-color Turing machine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> It's absurd to think that any entity within a simulation could draw conclusions about anything outside the simulation itself.

"Better than 50%" my ass, Elon and Neil are hacks.

</comment><comment><USER56> The probabilistic argument can be made the other way:

All the information for a simulated universe needs to be stored in some form in the outer universe, but the outer universe would also contain information not used for simulation.

If we consider an arbitrary piece of information, chances are it exists in the outer universe only - unless more than 50% of the outer universe is used for simulations.

If 100% of the outer universe is used for simulations, than the simulations are the outer universe(s).

</comment><comment><USER57> If this is a simulation then it's pretty mundane. If civilisations had the power to simulate universes, i can imagine vast numbers of more extreme or interesting universes. Heavens, hells, dramatic and artistic experiments. The mediocrity principle coupled with the fact that we're in quite a boring universe seems to indicate that either the majority of simulations are quite mundane for some reason, or we're likely not in a simulation.

<comment><USER3> Given the immense size of our simulation and our relatively small presence in it, it could be that the simulators had no expectations of it becoming self- aware. It would seem that they simply picked some fundamental parameters (physics) and started it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't see it as any more likely than us not being in a simulation. Regardless, these discussions always drag up so much existential dread in me.

</comment><comment><USER58> I like the moral implications: if the existential risk is being shut off, we should all do our part to keep things _interesting_

</comment><comment><USER59> Slightly off topic, but anybody who's interested in thinking about the simulation hypothesis might get a kick out of this short fiction piece: [https://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/166941](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/166941)

</comment><comment><USER60> One of the most important worries and cause of anxiety I have had, has been the question of who created humans and why. And who has the created this entity in return and who created that entity in return, so on and so forth.

I had many panic attacks with a sense of futility to life and meaning of it. Until some years earlier, I had an insight that maybe the rule that everything requires a beginning is a necessity for human mind to comprehend things. It is very damn well, possible to have things to exists without anyone setting things in order.

There is a significant probability that this world simply exists without a beginning nor an end. This notion has given peace and satisfaction & I very well maybe wrong, but that is least of my concern now.

</comment><comment><USER61> >"...we..."

"We"? Down this line of thinking, maybe the rest of you don't exist. Maybe I made the simulation complete with friends and then erased the fact from my memory.

Maybe instead of bugs in the simulation we should be looking for design flaws like irrational numbers for constants or slews of arbitrary particles. Of course if the universe were well designed we could use that as proof it's a simulation too.

But I'm not sure "fun to think about" corresponds with "interesting enough to take even remotely seriously"

</comment><comment><USER62> Of course "Are we living in a simulation" is far too vague to test. The type of simulation must be narrowed down before the question can be tested.

In my paper "A type of simulation which some experimental evidence suggests we don't live in", I give an example of a (very specific) type of simulation which we can easily test: [https://philpapers.org/archive/ALEATO-6.pdf](https://philpapers.org/archive/ALEATO-6.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER63> Side note: I strongly believe that we're just living inside a dream of some billionaires that were completely bored out. And, there is no test to falsify that thought...

</comment><comment><USER21> I always thought that one of the biggest criteria for the existence of a "parent" "reality" would be whether there is such a thing as Free Will or not.

If there is true randomness in our universe, then surely it must come from outside the universe, or our system could spontaneously put itself into an invalid state at some point and possibly crash, no?

</comment><comment><USER64> How would you tell if a competent simulation was fixing the results to return "I'm not a simulation" when queried?

</comment><comment><USER65> If there are simulators, can't / won't they detect our attempts to test the simulation hypothesis and patch any defects that scientists might notice to render such experiments un-reproducible?

Unless they really want us to find them. But then there are easier ways for that. One is simply painting in the sky: show me what you got.

<comment><USER34> Aliens might not be constantly watching all billions of life forms. Aliens might not care if we find them or not. There's plenty of reasons aliens wouldn't bother to interfere.

If you buy the Simulation Hypothesis, based on the premise that aliens have infinite computing power in which to run simulations like this, then logically you should also believe that we're not special. With infinite computing power, they don't need a giant datacenter and a research team to run us. It's just a few basic principles they chose last month (in their time), and a little box sitting on someone's desk, like the TNG episode "Ship in a Bottle". With infinite power, there's probably millions of simulations running.

Maybe if it becomes self-aware, a light turns on, and they cheer, like we do when the bouncing DVD logo hits exactly in the corner -- and then they go on with their life. Maybe kids pick different initial conditions and race to see which universe becomes self-aware first.

I don't believe the Simulation Hypothesis, but if it is true, the most likely scenario is that there's gobs of different simulations running, and aliens don't care about us at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Maybe something like conways game of life but using rules of thermodynamics instead to distribute cell energies may be fruitful at even a small level? Also it's worth considering if a reality that can operate outside of, or break mathematics/physics is possible. i.e. 1/0 as this would be harder to simulate

</comment><comment><USER66> Here is my collection of thoughts and opinions on the topic.

First: The fascination for simulation hypothesis is another extension of us humans wanting to be something special and also being very worried that we might not be so special after all. This is the constant inner battle of our minds between the our inferiority complex and the mediocrity principle. Like as if living a simulated but enjoyable life is not good enough. But, that is not to say that it is not at least an interesting thought experiment everybody should try once. It can even help us understand our own insignificance. (Excuse me, my nihilist got out)

Second: I do think there is no such a thing as simulation or even an inner and an outer forming a hierarchy. Imagine two astronomers looking into a telescope. One says to the other: "Wow, look I created this galaxy in there. And if I change the parameters just so slightly by adjusting this here, I get a totally different one which still has some similarities to the last one." Now, replace the telescope by a computer screen and the astronomers by two people programming a video game. What they fail to realize is that they do not "create" these galaxies or simulated universes. No, they are just observing them. And by interacting with the computer you don't change the simulation but instead switch to observing a different version. But, just like the natural numbers all of this just exists. It does not come into existence (is not created), neither does it cease to exist or change. It also needs no space or memory to be stored on and no mass to be conserved. 1+1=2 is true with and without us. It is completely independent. Concepts like time, space and mass are specific to some universes (like ours) and are not universal (pun intended).

Third: Yes, multiverse theory does not solve everything, but it solves the "trivial" questions like: \- Are we the result of an intelligent design, god, alien, simulation? Question which are just offsetting the problem by one. \- Are we just a computer simulation and thus not "real"? All universes are equally real, there is no hierarchy: Cognito ergo sum. \- Can we break out? Everything you find would just be another physical law and property of our universe. Or you get really lucky and are actually boltzmann-brained, allowing you to visit another universe while keeping your memories of the last one. At least that is what it would seem like to you.

Yet, multiverse theory lets us move on to the harder questions like: Why does anything exist at all? Wouldn't it be much simpler for just nothing to exist? What is qualia and how does it "emerge"?

P.S: Let them do their experiments, maybe they accidentally find something useful anyways.

</comment><comment><USER67> surprised no one has mentioned The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch. it's a must read on the subject, in particular when it comes to all the irreducible hints and theoretical constraints that would allow us to rule out a simulated reality.

</comment><comment><USER68> This is more or less simply impossible. If we observe some fact X about our universe we have no source of truth that can tell us whether X should be true or false for real universes, simulated universes, or both kinds of universes.

<comment><USER69> It's impossible to prove, but empirical evidence could improve the theory.

<comment><USER68> What kind of evidence are you hoping for? Say we measure particle trajectories very precisely and discover something that looks a lot like floating point rounding errors. Now what? How would you know that the physics of the real universe doesn't resembles floating point numbers? It is absolutely unjustified to jump from the universe looks smooth to us but our computer simulations have finite precision to the real universe is smooth and simulated universes might have finite precision.

It is an attempt to distinguish something we don't know from something else we don't know. Everything we know about our universe might be something that applies to real universes or something that applies to simulated universes depending on whether we live in a real universe or in a simulated universe. Even worse, we know nothing at all about simulated universes if we live in a real universe and we know nothing at all about real universes if we live in a simulated universe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Even if detecting that we are/are not in a simulation, building experiments to help answer unusual questions is another way to understand the physics of our reality. I think it is great.

</comment><comment><USER71> Where is all this computing power coming from? How many universes could you compute with the power of one sun over the course of it's life?

<comment><USER70> Why only one star? Even if you assume the simulating universe has similar physics to ours the simulating entities could be Kardashev[0] III, IV or V

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale)

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Eh, dark matter is the bug they seek.

</comment><comment><USER73> I hypothesize that its one or a combination of these three things.

1\. these people have run out of research ideas.

2\. they want a series on the Discovery network.

3\. they are scamming gullible billionaires into funding the "research".

The fact that Tyson has something insightful to say makes point 2 a strong possibility, I say better than 50-50. I am disappointed to not see Kaku pitch in.

<comment><USER74> And 4. They watched The Matrix at an impressionable age.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Couldn't a simulation also simulate our conclusions that we are not in one? It doesn't seem like one could answer this with any certainty in the end.

</comment><comment><USER76> If its a simulation there would be some "shortcut" way to get into "root" or supervisor mode.

<comment><USER34> Why? Conway's Life doesn't have a supervisor shortcut.

<comment><USER24> Depends how you think about it.

What if you ran Conway's Life simulation, and suddenly on you screen appear cells ordered in the form of text messages like "Hi, I am aware that this is a simulation, I want to talk with the entities outside it".</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Non-programming activities to improve coding skills? - <AUTHOR> What are non-programming activities that are useful for improving programming skills? <comment><USER2> My answer might be a little off, but even if programming skills are essential, they are not the only thing that matter.

Being able to speak in public, express clearly your ideas (either orally or written), being able to consider the opposite point of view, take into account the past and history when making a decision or a judgment are (IMO) essential skills.

To be more at ease when speaking publicly, you could play in a play or do some impro. Joining a debating club will also help in that and will force you to consider an opposing point of view. Reading and writing, analyzing arguments will help to better structure your arguments. Reading about history and being curious about everything will help to open your views before making any decision.

Otherwise: category theory (abstract maths), the link between physics and computation (see Feynman's lectures on computation).

</comment><comment><USER3> Exercise. Lifting weights, running, playing tennis/football/basketball/etc. In college I used to mentally review and visualize algorithms and other CS concepts during long 10+ mile runs. I always came home with new insights. Even if I'm not thinking anything technical, after exercise I'm always mentally invigorated. Also a good night's sleep will improve every aspect of your life.

<comment><USER4> Go for a walk at lunchtime.

Personally, I like ultimate frisbee. It's very much a read-and-react kind of play, which is a very different mindset from (most) programming. I think that switching the brain modes is helpful, at least for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Think about the data structures to represent things. Your friends, the schedule at your gym, the ingredients in your coffee, etc.

I'd encourage kids to do this as well, before they actually start making programs.

</comment><comment><USER6> Strive to build a startup. This includes coming up with ideas, design, business skills, marketing, etc. This is the best way to optimize for learning everything "around" coding that will make you a much more valuable programmer.

Write or speak(blogging or youtube channel). Get awesome at communicating your ideas, while also building your authority, and a platform with an audience that you may find valuable for many reasons - selling your products, finding a job, etc.

Develop social and networking skills. It's hard but it pays off.

Take care of your health. Eat well, exercise. If you do well, you'll stay sharp, capable, productive. If you fail, it will set you back many years.

Read or listen to audiobooks to acquire general wisdom. Get an audible account and a good podcasting app, download a bunch of things you're curious about, and enjoy them during the commute/exercise/chores time.

Keep learning - watch Udemy courses, read books on CS and engineering, etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> Don't know if this fully counts since it abstracts away the "programming" part of it but I have found the game Opus Magnum to be great fun ([http://store.steampowered.com/app/558990/Opus_Magnum/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/558990/Opus_Magnum/)). The object of the game is to control various machines to make molecules, you control the machines by giving them instructions like rotate one turn or pick up what you are hovering over. I have found it to be like programming but with enough abstraction that it makes me think pretty hard. Plus it is really fun to optimize things after you build them.

</comment><comment><USER8> Emotional intelligence. You will certainly need to work with other people and a higher emotional intelligence helps you work more effectively with other people.

You'll understand your project's goals better, you'll work with your team more efficiently, and you'll manage your own emotions better.

There are two techniques for improving emotional intelligence in this article I wrote: [https://www.climbuptheladder.com/the-importance-of- emotional...](https://www.climbuptheladder.com/the-importance-of-emotional- intelligence-in-your-career-and-how-to-develop-it/).

</comment><comment><USER9> Develop an interest in basic electronics and make DIY hobby projects involving electronic circuits. Since it involves physical construction and failures can be costly in terms of time and money, careful checking and rechecking of plans, circuits and any microcontroller code before switching it on becomes an automatic habit.

I found these habits carrying over to my pure software projects resulting in less bugs.

And if you _really_ want to take this idea to the extreme, learn to build power supplies and other projects involving mains electricity - a mistake there can mean it's the last bug you'll ever write!

</comment><comment><USER10> Learn a creative skill like cooking, drawing, painting, or sculpting. For me - I always tend to see my art as a metaphor to programming. Each step in the process is a small function, and each finished piece (meal, painting, etc) is like a working program. Sometimes it needs to be refactored, other times it's fine as it is.

A lot of programmers I know don't have a creative side to them. The programmers and engineers I respect the most all have a unique and creative outlook on life, which shows in their CS work.

</comment><comment><USER11> There's always 'recreational mathematics' \-- puzzles of the type Martin Gardner was known for.

On the less STEM side, taking a look at what's around you and trying to reverse-engineer the reasons behind design decisions is also useful. Why do zippers have that little nub on them? Why is jaywalking a crime? Why are red lights red rather than blue? Sometimes this is a matter of path dependence, but other times there's some deeper reason.

</comment><comment><USER12> Dancing. I am learning Tango and apart from it being an absolutely amazing multi-disciplinary education (kinestetic, musical, emotional, relational, social, how to learn and more), it rewires my brain in new, delightful and unexpected ways.

I can't recommend it enough and I need to disclose that it is difficult to extremely difficult in all its aspects and will reveal your reflection in all these dimensions and more.

</comment><comment><USER13> Any activity that lets you practice curiosity and creativity. Make music, play video games, figure out why the WiFi is spotty in that one room.

Also, learn to type fast.

<comment><USER14> I do not think fast typing is a requisite or even usually a "nice-to-have" skill for programming.

I'm a professional programmer who types over 100wpm, so maybe I'm overlooking something. I rarely ever find that typespeed is my limiting factor.

<comment><USER15> I think you're overlooking that you type at over 100wpm. (So of course typespeed isn't your bottleneck.)

<comment><USER14> Fair enough, but I could have gone into more detail.

For every 1 minute that I spend typing code, I probably spend 10+ minutes reading and thinking about code.

We're trying to optimize the 10% if we're trying to improve coding by improving wpm

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Read books, especially fiction. For me, reading science fiction significantly increased my creativity and problem solving skills at work.

</comment><comment><USER17> Here are a few tips

\- Creative writing

\- Exercise</comment>


Ask HN: What happened to your first few projects? - <AUTHOR>

I've worked on several side projects over the last year or so, and I keep seeing ideas that're practically the same as those I'm working on having been fully implemented a few weeks after I've started. I'm not losing heart, and I'm taking this as a positive sign that I'm going in the right direction (albeit a little too slowly) - but it's made me interested in how common this is, especially among people who have many successful side projects a few years on.<p>How did your first few projects fail (if they did), and do projects still fail for the reasons I described above? <comment><USER3> My current project, which may not be the most unique idea is only a couple of month old. The only thing that threatens it right now is my excitement to start new projects and I only have so much time for a side project while working full time. I get very low traffic but I understand why I have a chicken and the egg problem, at least in theory. But i am starting to get some chicken out of the blue and a few eggs are hatching, which is why I try to hang in there. A year from now I know things will look better.

Why don't you show us your side projects

<comment><AUTHOR> My few side projects are, at present, just fragments here and there - <USER2> really cohesive. I do intend to post them here when I actually get something worth showing finished.

I'm pretty new to completing my own side-projects, so that's the main thing I'm learning at the moment: how to find time to get personal projects done, and actually doing it. I'm getting there, but there's a lot more to learn just yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This question inspired me to write a blog post: <http://aaron.posthaven.com/how-i-destroyed-my-first-startup>

TL;DR version: I started a forum that organized Halo tournaments. I added an extra piece of software that wasn't compatible with the forum software. So I dropped the database and asked my users to register again. It didn't work out so well.

</comment><comment><USER5> All of them died, sometimes half-completed, after I learned what I wanted. I never had the expectation that I could finish a full product by myself, I've always tried to do projects in order to learn a specific thing.

</comment><comment><USER6> I put my ex-projects onto <http://www.ex-prj.com>. And I will put ex-prj.com onto itself.</comment>


Breast cancer genes ruled unpatentable (by NY district court) - <AUTHOR> http://www.aclu.org/free-speech-technology-and-liberty-womens-rights/association-molecular-pathology-et-al-v-uspto-et-al

<comment><USER2> From one of the linked-to articles:

 _The patents granted to Myriad give the company the exclusive right to perform diagnostic tests on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes and to prevent any researcher from even looking at the genes without first getting permission from Myriad._

I don't know the ins and outs of patent law, but the idea that this kind of patent was even granted makes me want to tear the whole damn thing down.

<comment><USER3> That's about what I feel. Does anyone know if this is the first time that a patent of a discovered gene has been tested in court?

<comment><USER2> I don't know. The article I read mentioned that the basis for the ACLU's suit was against the idea of patenting genes in general, which is likely to have significant secondary effects as future cases will be able to use this case as legal precedent.

I'm still boggled by the idea that human genes have been allowed to be patented. I mean, if the general public really knew that this was happening I feel like there would be at least a moderate uproar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A wise move. Now nature will have no financial incentive to develop new types of breast cancer.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ruling available here: [http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/2010-3-29-AMPvUSPTO- Opinion...](http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/2010-3-29-AMPvUSPTO-Opinion.pdf)

The interesting bits start on page 96 (have to type this in by hand from the PDF):

"The rule that the discovery of a law of nature cannot be patented rests [...] they are not the kind of discovery that the status was enacted to protect."

<comment><USER5> It seems reasonable to me. There's a gray area between "discovery" and "invention", but finding a gene seems more like discovering something new about how gravity works. If a physicist did that, they couldn't get a blanket patent on the very idea of a device that took advantage of that gravitational feature.

Where it does get trickier is that it seems that said physicist might be able to patent a particular kind of new machine that took advantage of their discovery, and analogously, someone might be able to patent a particular kind of chemical or device that uses this gene.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it's so tricky, and I think that's exactly what the ACLU said: that you can patent therapies or drugs or whatever that work on that gene, but you can't patent the gene itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would such patent make cancer patients have to pay royalties for their illness?

<comment><USER7> No but you would have to pay fees if you produced kids with cancer.

<comment><USER8> I realise this is a joke, but patents cover the use of something, not just reproduction or manufacture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wouldn't this ruling mean that NO discovered genes may be patented?</comment>


The digital revolution in higher education has already happened - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@cshirky/the-digital-revolution-in-higher-education-has-already-happened-no-one-noticed-78ec0fec16c7 <comment><USER2> I'm in the UK and work as a programmer (own business) but I don't have a degree, I would absolutely _love_ a recognised online degree in software engineering, the nearest I've found so far is Open University (we've done distance learning here a long time and OU has an excellent reputation) but they only do as far as I can tell a BSc in Computing, you can pick software engineering modules inside that but at the end it's still BSc Computing not BSc Software Engineering.

<comment><USER3> I'd echo the other reply. Do as much as you can using online sources (Coursera, edX, plenty of CS and Algorithm courses etc) but just make sure the problem sets and any 'academic' programming is on your Github.

FWIW, I started a Maths degree with OU, and the material was excellent. Then my life took over...

<comment><USER4> I second the Maths degree with the OU. I just finished a masters in maths with them and they really didn't pull any punches. I am a far better mathematician now than I was five years ago (or rather, five years ago I _wasn 't_ any kind of mathematician, but now I can blitz through a post-graduate level textbook and bootstrap myself to competency). I'm getting a bit old for serious exams, though. I genuinely started to feel light-headed in the final one.</comment></comment></comment>


1.3 million Hacker News stories tell a tale - <AUTHOR> http://www.dataphoric.com/how-i-hacked-hacker-news/#hn <comment><USER2> > _I've commited a grave statistical faux-pas in this article. Did you spot > it? I showed that the number of votes a Hacker News story gets is correlated > with the time it is submitted. Then, I told you that submitting your story > at a particular time will cause it to have a higher chance of success. > Correlation does not imply causation, however, so this is unproven. It is > entirely possible that stories submitted on the weekend have simply been > better than those submitted on weekdays, or that weekend readers are "vote- > happy". However, my intuition suggests to me that it is most likely that > there is true causation here._

You probably should have _led_ with that caveat. Ignoring it completely for the sake of an argument is misleading.

Relatedly, "what if I told you I found an easy way to increase your story's votes by 172%?" is _flat-out wrong_. That metric implies an _average_ behavior, which is not the case here.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. I was focused on telling a useful story with the data. I should be more careful not to be misleading.

Your related point is a good catch. That was a brain slip on my part. Thanks for pointing it out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Same story from 6 hours ago, this time with '#hn' added to the URL [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10068983](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10068983)

If you found the solution when/if a story gets picked up by time-of-day then why submit it again? (I'm making an ironic joke)

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha. Actually, Hacker News admin sent me an email asking me to re-submit it with a slightly different URL.

<comment><USER4> No, we invited you to repost [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10011081](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10011081), not this blog post.

A neural network simulation in a browser is a great HN submission. You were right that it fell through the cracks undeservedly, and finding such stories and giving them a second chance is the purpose of our experiment in reposting.

Looking through HN data to analyze posting times? not so much. Meta posts are a low-quality genre to begin with, plus analyzing posting times to figure out how to time HN is something of a cliché, and even if the findings are meaningful, it's hard to see how HN improves as a result of them. Also, we'd not likely invite a repost when the original had a misleading, linkbait title like "How I hacked Hacker News".

Please do repost the neural network though!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for clarifying, dang. My apologies.

<comment><USER4> Not to worry! Of course the post from earlier today was fresher in your mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I looked at the data from 1.3 million Hacker News stories and found that _when_ a story gets submitted makes a big difference (up to 172% better chance of getting on the front page). This article shows the analysis and results.

I used the official Hacker News API to get the stories using Python, and used R and ggplot2 to do the exploratory data analysis and plots.

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting, I wonder if there is a difference in discovery rate of 'Ask HN:' submissions vs. others.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. "Ask HN" and "Show HN" both do almost twice as well as standard stories.</comment></comment>


Fat, Not Meat, May Have Led to Bigger Hominin Brains - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fat-not-meat-may-have-led-to-bigger-hominin-brains/ <comment><USER2> One of the first _human_ foods was actually bone marrow which is basically pure fat.

This happened about 2MYA by Homo habilis who figured out that you could use rocks to bust open bones.

Lions and Hyenas would leave huge piles of bones in the middle of the dessert which had been picked clean by vultures.

One of our ancestors had the brilliant idea to use a rock to bust open the bones.

Well it's a massive source of free calories. It's absolutely brilliant. It's just sitting there and there are no other predators or species around to fight with at that point.

It's also very safe to eat even days after since the marrow is wrapped in bone.

Next time you're out at a fancy restaurant and they have bone marrow GET IT...

Then realize you're eating one of the first foods that modern man ate and think of the gift he gave us.

<comment><USER3> _Lions and Hyenas would leave huge piles of bones in the middle of the dessert which had been picked clean by vultures.

One of our ancestors had the brilliant idea to use a rock to bust open the bones._

Wait - I thought hyenas were specifically bone-busting / eating:

"Spotted hyenas are some of Africa's most proficient predators. A frenzied scrum of them can dismantle and devour a 400-pound zebra in 25 minutes. An adult spotted hyena can tear off and swallow 30 or 40 pounds of meat per feeding. Latecomers to a kill use their massive jaw muscles and molars to pulverize the bones for minerals and fatty marrow. Hair and hooves get regurgitated later. "The only thing left is a patch of blood on the ground," says Holekamp." [1]

1 - [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/whos- laughing-...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/whos-laughing- now-38529396/)

<comment><USER4> May be hyenas also adapter over million year period to bust open bones. But i wonder why they did not develop a brain like ours!

<comment><USER5> Brains are only developed if there is an advantage and I guess a brain without fingers, our eyes etc isn't maybe as useful as using the fat for energy.

<comment><USER6> Yp, brain uses tremendous amount of energy so there's a cost. Use too much of it to build the brain and you starve...use too little and same result since you're outsmarted. Rinse repeat until it's perfected.

<comment><USER7> Heyenas have 2 extra legs to waste energy on. Not much left in the budget for a big brain.

<comment><USER8> Rats have a similar brain-to-body mass as humans. Cats are fairly intelligent, are they not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't subscribe to New Scientist's trick title or the theories of nutrient limited mammalian brain evolution.

Compare brain size of carnivore species with herbivores - there is no overt division in average or max brain size. Generally, herbivorous mammals seem to evolve brains just as large as carnivorous ones. Elephants, orangutans, gorillas grow big brains on a vegetarian diet.

If predator diets contain a special surplus of evolutionary-brain-growing nutrients, a few predator species should manifest that claim ~ besides our own artful and fire cooking one.

<comment> village-idiot Brain size to body size matters a lot too. Sperm whales have about 6x the brain we do, but far more than 6x the body to control.

<comment><USER10> I know this is the conventional wisdom but it doesn't really make sense. Controlling a sperm whale's body doesn't seem like a hard computational problem.

<comment><USER11> I assume you mean relative to controlling a human body?

<comment><USER10> Relative to anything smaller really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _"We have no examples today of animals that scavenge but don't hunt," he > adds._

I've seen a number of articles in the last few years talking about how scavenging meat seems to be much more common amongst animals we typically consider herbivores (like deer) than previously realized. There are also a number of opportunistic omnivorous scavengers that rely more on scavenging than hunting it they hunt at all. This claim seems bogus to me.

<comment><USER13> Most ungulates eat their own afterbirth. Sure, that's easier to digest than most carcasses would be, and less likely to spread disease, but it shows that meat digestion is possible.

<comment><USER14> If I'm to believe [0], that applies to many if not most mammals, _some humans included_.

\--

[0] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placental_expulsion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placental_expulsion)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wouldn't other animals with strong bites be capable of crushing bones to eat the marrow inside? The theory is big on assumptions, but I guess that's how it goes when you're trying to figure out what happened millions of years ago.

<comment><USER8> Some animals like snakes simply swallow prey whole. Dogs and pigs are known for eating hastily with minimal chewing, and I'd imagine many other predators are the same. No idea how efficiently their respective digestive systems extract nutrients from solid mammal chunks.

<comment><USER16> > Dogs and pigs are known for eating hastily with minimal chewing,

Because they have no or smaller cheeks. But they have very acid stomachs.

The Comparative Anatomy of Eating

[http://www.vegsource.com/news/2009/11/the-comparative- anatom...](http://www.vegsource.com/news/2009/11/the-comparative-anatomy-of- eating.html)

Omnivore or Herbivore?

[https://livinontheveg.com/omnivore-or- herbivore/](https://livinontheveg.com/omnivore-or-herbivore/)

Milton Mills, MD: Are Humans Designed to Eat Meat?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXj76A9hI-o&t=66](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXj76A9hI-o&t=66)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I thought this was known.

When my first born was a toddler, she would go into the fridge and eat butter.

I expressed concern to my grandmother, a life long nurse who was born in 1920 said to me; "the brain knows that it needs fats to grow, just let her eat butter. It is what her body is saying she needs"

She is super smart and it wasnt an issue otherwise.

<comment><USER18> The translation of deficiencies into food cravings has always fascinated me. People with pica, for example, often compulsively eat non-foods that are in fact related to a deficiency they have. Anemics sometimes crave dirt (which does contain iron).

But how does it "know"?

<comment><USER19> Probably a memory of the taste and the vitamins that follow it.

My wife craves mints when she's low on iron.

<comment><USER17> But do mints provide any iron?

<comment><USER20> If they are fortified they do, or better up if they are some kind of mint- flavoured supplements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Fat from marrow and brains to be clear, other articles make that distinction in the title, and do not jump to the fat conclusion in the title.

<comment><USER22> And the only reason they went after the marrow and brain was because they were eating the leftovers, according to the article. They couldn't really eat other parts of the animal unless they wanted to become food to other predators.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's still a bit bizarre watching the western world switch form carbs good, fat bad to carbs bad fat good in the span of like a decade.

<comment><USER24> _...to carbs bad fat good in the span of like a decade_

Not at all. I remember it was a thing in the seventies. The low-carbs diet has been viciously attacked for many decades, so it comes and goes every few years. I first heard of it when Atkins popularized it:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkins_diet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkins_diet)

See how Wikipedia says it's "a fad diet" and its claims "questionable", implying that it doesn't work at all.

But now take a look at this other article, a couple links further:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketosis)

"In glycolysis, higher levels of insulin promote storage of body fat and block release of fat from adipose tissues, while in ketosis, fat reserves are readily released and consumed.[5][7] For this reason, ketosis is sometimes referred to as the body's "fat burning" mode.[8]"

So it turns out it works?

Is it dangerous? Maybe, but I wouldn't trust the sources that I already know are lying to my face. Not to talk about my own experience, but that's valid for me, YMMV.

In HN there were some submissions past year about this guy that did the research in which Atkins based its diet:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Yudkin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Yudkin)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+...](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+yudkin)

Edit: I forgot to say what I started writing this comment for to begin with, that many millions did the Atkins diet at the time and vouched for it.

<comment><USER25> The notion that low-carb diets are superior has deeply unsettling political implications, for exactly the same reason that low-meat diets don't: _what are the staple crops of humanity?_

The top ten in order are: _corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, sassava, soybeans, sweat potatoes, yams, sorghum, and plantains_. These are all carbs! If we accept that low carb diets are better for people, then we must either accept that we are going to feed humanity sub-optimally, or that humanity is _well_ past the healthy carrying capacity of the planet. There is simply no way in hell we can get 7.5 billion people eating keto, or anything close to it.

Vegan activists are proposing a dietary future that is very much in line with the current global agro-industrial status quo. However low-carb proponents are proposing a diet that, if universalized, would necessarily put them in the camp of people like Pentti Linkola.

<comment><USER24> Please, understand that Atkins diet is not a diet recommended for _everybody_. It's a diet created to help people that suffer an imbalance in their diet (or worse, in their metabolism) that has made them get fat and they want to lose weight.

That's why "balanced diet" is an absurd recommendation for fat people. If you're following a balanced diet, you probably don't need to lose weight. Atkins himself recommended a balanced diet, just avoiding refined carbs, for most people.

One personal comment: I wouldn't follow any diet proposed by _activists_ of any kind, specially when their main motive is their particular ethics that, at least for me, suggest a strong bias. Unless of course I share that same ethical vision. Edit: I actually wouldn't follow _any_ life advice from activists of any kind, I'd rather have my own agenda.

<comment><USER25> There are people who recommend obese people adopt diets that induce ketosis. These people are not suggesting diets that should be followed by everybody. However there are also people who say that carb intake should be greatly reduced across the board for everybody, that even something seemingly extreme like a 90% reduction of carbs in the average diet wouldn't be enough to induce ketosis but would nevertheless be far healthier.

However the current size of the human population is incompatible with anything other than the vast majority of people getting the vast majority of their calories from carbs. For that reason, people recommending a large reduction on carb intake across the board will almost certainly continue to be marginalized, pushed to the sidelines in most mainstream discussions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Whale blubber and mammal livers are high in vitamin c and considering primates lost the function of the GULO (L-gulonolactone oxidase) gene, one could surmise from megafauna extinctions that hunting was essential to most nomadic hominids.

Also, GULO is one of many interesting genes to contemplate resurrecting.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is new news? O thought it was established a while ago that humans have only made the progress we have because of an increase in animal fat consumption.

Hell, with a few exceptions, you can cluster mammals in a pretty accurate grouping of intelligence by the percentage of animal fat in their diet.

<comment><USER28> It's an ongoing debate:

> _In a wide-ranging review published in February's issue of Current > Anthropology, Thompson joins a team of researchers to weave together several > strands of recent evidence and propose a new theory about the transition to > large animal consumption by our ancestors. The prevailing view, supported by > a confluence of fossil evidence from sites in Ethiopia, is that the > emergence of flaked tool use and meat consumption led to the cerebral > expansion that kickstarted human evolution more than 2 million years ago. > Thompson and her colleagues disagree: Rather than using sharpened stones to > hunt and scrape meat from animals, they suggest, earlier hominins may have > first bashed bones to harvest fatty nutrients from marrow and brains._

> _Then, starting in the mid-1980s, an opposing theory arose in which Homo's > emergence wasn't so tightly coupled with the origins of hunting and > predatory dominance. Rather, early hominins first accessed brain-feeding > nutrients through scavenging large animal carcasses. The debate has rolled > on through the decades, with evidence for the scavenging theory gradually > building._

> _Because large animals such as antelope pack a serious micro-and-macro- > nutrient punch, scientists have thought their meat contributed to humanity's > outsized brains. A consensus arose in the 1950s that our ancestors first > hunted small animals before moving on to larger beasts around 2.6 million > years ago. Flaked tool use and meat eating became defining characteristics > of the Homo genus._

You know, "science advances one funeral at a time" and all that.

Plus, I'm sure there is some kind of power-fantasy attachment to the older theory that basically puts humans on top of the food chain as apex predators due to our intelligence.

<comment><USER27> > _Plus, I 'm sure there is some kind of power-fantasy attachment to the older > theory that basically puts humans on top of the food chain as apex predators > due to our intelligence._

Probably has more weight than it'll ever be given credit for.

"Early man noticed cats and hyenas are bigger, faster, stronger, starts picking the bones of their kills. Hundreds of generations later, man's need for more fat and meat exceeds what's available from scavenging. With his increased brain and brawn, he begins digging pungee pits to kill his own animals."

Not very glamorous.

<comment><USER28> > _Probably has more weight than it 'll ever be given credit for._

Well, there is one way out: once the previous generation loses power, the next one can feel smugly superior by saying how petty they were.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So everyone get in keto diet and get smart.. When I grew up bone marrow is my favorite meat but now in US it is hard to find

</comment><comment><USER28> Tangent: this is a Scientific American "reprint" (reshare?) of a Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0 licensed article originally published here: [https://www.sapiens.org/evolution/brain-evolution- fat/](https://www.sapiens.org/evolution/brain-evolution-fat/)

I don't know if that matters to others, but I personally prefer the original source for articles like these.

</comment><comment><USER30> Ghee is considered "Brain food" in Indian culture. It is included in many food items and also in Ayurvedic Meds.

[https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/amp39Gheeamp39-and- its-m...](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/amp39Gheeamp39-and-its-many- benefits/articleshow/10979319.cms)

<comment><USER31> Poisons in very low quantity are used to treat diseases. Could it be that Ayurveda uses milk to treat the imbalance of the "doshas"?

As a food, Ghee was used so very sparingly that it was almost not used at all. We cannot compare the quantities we consume today with those before the Dairy Revolution.

<comment><USER32> The writers of the Rgveda certainly were members of a pastoralist society, so they would have had a decent amount of dairy, if not quite the same quantities as today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It was likely both. Protein offers diminishing returns after you have 'enough', fat offers good amounts of energy and nutrients. Also, humans likely have always eaten some plant material, but wild plants are quite poor in calories and macronutrients.

</comment><comment><USER34> Makes sense. The brain needs fuel. Without adequate fuel there's no way for it to grow, unless the body gave up some of its need for the same fuel. So I would presume there's that as well. That is, the body also evolved to feed the brain.

<comment><USER35> Well fat to grow but it burns sugar

<comment><USER36> It _can_ burn _glucose_ (table sugar is _sucrose_ ).

It can also burn other stuff [0] and have almost no requirements for glucose, all of which can be provided through gluconeogenesis from amino acids and the glycerol backbone of fat.

[0]: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2874681/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2874681/)

<comment><USER37> It prefers to burn glucose. You have to be starving it to get it to use ketones.

What does that tell you?

<comment><USER36> Your body also prefers to metabolize ethanol (which provides quite a bit of energy, by the way) before anything else in the bloodstream.

What does that tell you?

Absolutely nothing. I could go with the "get rid of poison" narrative, but that is a bit too extreme and is usually taken with a great deal of psychological resistance. I couldn't blame you.

Also, I believe that a well-formulated ketogenic diet is pretty far from starvation, enabling me to do exactly the same, if not more, as when I was running on carbohydrate. Of course, you might believe otherwise, but do take the time to think critically about where this belief stems from.

<comment><USER37> [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3900881/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3900881/)

A keto diet is good for cutting weight while bodybuilding, or doing any sporting endeavor and you got fat, but prolonged periods on it will damage the brain.

"Of course you may believe otherwise" and so on

<comment><USER36> I must be missing something. What is the relevant portion of the article you linked? They even _praise_ the ketogenic diet.

In case you wonder, the brain uses around 25% glucose and 75% ketones even in deep ketosis. Glucose in the blood is stable, and spent glucose is replenished through gluconeogenesis on demand.

I would like to know what your point is here. Thanks.

<comment><USER37> It doesn't praise ketogenic diet anywhere. Quote it then. My point is that the ketogenic diet is useless for anyone but eppilieptics or those wanting to lose weight fast, bodybuilders or sports that require weight limits

"Within minutes, glucose depletion and associated compromised bioenergetic pathways cause extensive neuronal death in the core of the infarction, and over time in the surrounding tissue"

Someone on here is going to read your bad advice, and god forbid, follow it. Here's my two cents

<comment><USER36> The paper you linked mentions the diet twice, and both mentions are positive:

> Early diagnosis of the GLUT1 deficiency syndrome is important because > adherence to a ketogenic diet (Glossary) [15] is an effective treatment for > most patients [83]; in general, ketogenic diet efficiently suppresses > epileptic seizures in childhood drug-resistant epilepsy [87].

Regarding your quote, please read the sentence right before it:

> A thromboembolic occlusion of a brain-supplying artery leads to an acute > disruption in blood supply to a specific brain territory, causing cerebral > ischemia (Figure 1b). Within minutes, glucose depletion and associated > compromised bioenergetic pathways cause extensive neuronal death in the core > of the infarction, and over time in the surrounding tissue [90, 91].

The sentence you quoted is in the context of a fucking stroke and has absolutely nothing to do with diet. Are you aware of that?

And again, the brain still has glucose readily available (and uses it) when on a ketogenic diet.

Please do try to inform yourself and/or read more carefully before judging others' views.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> \- The break down of fats for energy is called beta-oxidation and is not performed by brain cells.

\- The brain relies on the liver to produce ketone bodies instead.

\- Our cells break down carbohydrates, then proteins and then fats

A diet high in fat only contributes raw calories to the brain - the fuel is unusable directly. The argument basically boils down to: more calories led to bigger brains.</comment>


Why We May Soon Be Living in Alexa's World - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/technology/amazon-alexa-world.html <comment><USER3> Pretty sure I should be the target market for this, and I bought one. But I don't use it and it sits unplugged on the shelf. I'm going to sell it while the going is good.

It's just so _pointless_. You have to speak to it in some weird specific way to get it to integrate with other stuff and it feels so completely invasive.

My wife is the other end of the scale of target market. Complete non-techie, absolute ease of use consumer. She used it as a glorified egg timer, bluetooth speaker and occasionally to play some radio (when it didn't cut out). IT did nothing else for her and adding skills herself was a PITA step too far.

I'm a 'millennial' (if that matters) but this just doesn't have a place in my home. Even my kids, who loved shouting at it to play music, got bored of it and went back to selecting music on their devices.

Maybe I'm getting old but it just feels like Alexa and other voice assistants are just getting shoved into stuff because it is a 'tech spec' and they hope that will sell their device.

It's 3D all over again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe it's not for everyone. We were given an Echo Dot for Christmas. By itself, it's at best a toy, I agree. I didn't use it after the first couple days.

A couple weeks ago my perception changed when I got a Fire TV Stick, and paired it with Alexa. It feels really futuristic to be able to say "Alexa, play Psych" and see the TV change and start where we left off. I can control Netflix and Amazon streaming with only my voice. Now I'm looking for ways to be able to turn on/off the TV, and volume with Alexa.

I think integrating with real world items is where Alexa shines. And as far as your comment on syntax, I've found it very intuitive, and it's only getting better every day.

<comment><USER4> I would love all of that, but I don't want it connecting back to the cloud. And understanding some of the inherent necessities these things have _with_ the cloud, I understand I am not the target market.

Which is a shame. If there's another HA device out there that in convenient form factor that communicates with my LAN and gives me greater granular control over what it talks to, I'd be buying three right now.

 _That 's a hint to anyone who may be working on a product, or know of a product that fits the niche of the perpetually paranoid :P_

<comment><USER5> [https://mycroft.ai/](https://mycroft.ai/)

It has features that will use the internet, but I don't think it's required to be given internet access.

...and they even sell a 3-pack ;)

<comment><USER6> This looks great! I've been interested in playing with a voice assistant but prefer not to give my data to amazon. Will definitely be giving this a try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really hope it's not Alexa.

My brother's Alexa will say stuff like "Sorry, I don't understand 'turn living room light off'" even though the "turn living room light on" command worked five minutes prior. Repeating back _exactly_ what Alexa didn't understand works the second or third time. "Unpolished" doesn't do the platform justice.

My Google Home is accurate, even though open doors and with the TV on. The Pixel 2 seems to yield control to Home just fine (which was a problem with my Pixel 1). The voice itself sounds slightly more natural and friendly - <USER2> sometimes find myself holding back a "thank you."

Has anyone had any contradictory experiences to my own?

<comment><USER8> I always thank the AIs when I do a command... I hope skynet takes that as a positive when deciding how to get rid of me.

<comment><USER9> So do I! I'm always disappointed that my Google Home isn't capable of acknowledging a "thank you". I feel like it should be possible for it to achieve something like this (with a "no problem" response) without requiring additional communication with the cloud.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm only interested in owning one of these devices when I actually own it. That is when the device is actually working for me, not the corporation who sold it to me. I'd be very interested in a personal assistant/ daemon that wasn't part of some walled-garden ecosystem and would actually put the benefit of its user ahead of the profits of corporation. If I ask my daemon to find me a product, I want it to compare prices across all online vendors to find the best deal for me, not just default to purchasing from Amazon. I also want complete control over the information it shares with third-parties, and I want to directly benefit from any information sharing as my data is valuable and if folks want it they're going to have to provide me some benefit in exchange.

<comment><USER11> I agree wholeheartedly. I'd love to see an open source project or even the Mozilla Foundation or Canonical take on this challenge.

Either way, until that happens, I will not be having such a pervasive data collecting device in my home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> These kinds of devices are things I will never own. If they start coming as built-in non-optional features on televisions or other home electronics, I won't buy those either.

</comment><comment><USER13> So does anyone have any insight on the screaming thing? That seems kind of brushed over for something so nightmarish and surreal.

<comment><USER14> The Alexa App shows every interaction, including the recorded sound that triggered it, and how "Alexa" interpreted it, so it would be possible for the author to investigate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Doesn't say why the Echo device was wailing. Kind of annoying.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that was a pretty creepy story with no resolution. My baby monitor is the only device that wails at me at night :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I totally buy the story from a personal perspective, but it does seem like the general cloud marketshare case across Google, Azure, and AWS is starting to normalize.

I'm excited about the possibilities of the big 3 competing on a more level playing field.

Am I being naive here, or not? It feels like a new marketplace is opening up.

<comment><USER17> I've just moved into a new house and have spent quite a few hours smartifying it. What I'll say is that, though there will be competition, once a user chooses an ecosystem, they are locking themselves into one side of a 1990's Mac vs PC-esque death race.

Using Home Assistant and jumping through some hoops, I've been able to force onto the same system some devices that really put up a massive fight to play nicely together; and I have even more manual work before I'll be able to use Google Assistant to control it all with my voice.

The competition, though... it's really, really bad for most users.

<comment><USER18> Well, from my first impression Alexa is rubbish.

Went round a friend on Friday who has one, people started throwing songs at it. It's slow and only roughly 20% of the time it managed to understand us. We figured out some trick of song then artist (or maybe artist than song) which made it work a little better.

Worse still when it did understand us most of the time it was only able to play a sample. "prime".

Do not buy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is there a foss alternative for command-style speech recognition? I'd love to control my lamps this way.

<comment><USER20> I've longed for this as well. In theory it can be done. The individual ingredients are all available in the universe of FOSS software... speech to text (CMU Sphinx, etc), language parsing (NTLK, etc), IoT integration, etc. But assembling all these components and frameworks into an integrated, reliably-working system takes a great deal of time and effort, even if you're a skilled programmer (which I'm not).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> My prediction is these devises will start becoming worthwhile when Alexa et al reach actual human intelligence. Voice interfaces does nothing for anyone unless you are handicapped in some way.

<comment><AUTHOR> I imagine by the time voice assistants reach human intelligence we will be able to ask Alexa to clean the floors and put the food away :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can someone explain why I need one of these things instead of using Siri or Google Assistant on my phone?</comment>


Monitor running processes with Perl - <AUTHOR> http://jmorano.moretrix.com/2014/05/monitor-running-processes-with-perl/

<comment><USER2> It looks like an implementation of monit in Perl...</comment>